Unturned Cakes
by nivcharayahel
Summary: Written for Gilesficathon. Willow and Giles talk about resentment and loss. Post AtS "Damage"


Title: "Unturned Cakes"  
  
Author: nivcharayahel  
  
Rating: I tried to make it TV-14, but it turned into MA for language. Imagine Nigel Havers saying, "This program is intended for a mature audience. It contains dialogue of an adult nature. Viewer discretion is advised." That should pretty much cover it.  
  
Spoilers: All seven seasons of Buffy, particularly 7.22 "Chosen"—and Angel 5.11 "Damage".  
  
Acknowledgments: Thanks to wolfling for setting up the Gilesficathon, and to Chris for the challenge. And thanks, as always, to penwiper26 for the beta services and friendship. Also thanks to naomichana and her blog discussion of the "Eyleh ezkerah" prayer from the Yom Kippur services—I've taken her translation of the first couple of lines for my title and epigraph. Finally, thanks to my friend percival_b, from whom I have stolen the delicious phrase "carpal tunnel of the butt."  
  
Challenge: Giles and Willow, post Dark Willow. Theme: resentment. Restrictions: No fluff. Make Giles's eyes hazel.  
  
"These things do I remember, and I pour out my soul / For strangers have devoured us like unturned cakes."  
  
*****  
  
Giles's abrupt departure from the meeting of the new Slayers' Council—an unusual meeting in that all were actually present, rather than on various ends of an international conference call—stunned everyone into silence.  
  
Slowly, Buffy gathered her wits, and said, "What the hell was that all about?"  
  
"I don't—I don't know for sure," answered Willow. She chewed on a lock of hair, then yanked it from her mouth and glared at it in disgust before pulling it away from her face. "I think he's just a little stressed is all. He's taken the whole Dana thing pretty hard, you know. And he's been at this for so long . . . ."  
  
Buffy's mouth set in a tight line. "So have the rest of us, Will. But we're not yelling at people and then running out of meetings like someone set us on fire. This is—" She stopped speaking, abruptly, and sprang up from her seat at the conference table. "I'd better go find him."  
  
Willow moved to stop her. "I don't think that's a good idea. Let's just finish the meeting, and give him a little time. If he's still out there after the lunch break, I'll just . . . I think I know where he is." She gave a timid smile around the room. "It's not like he's gonna get lost on his own property, after all . . . . He'll be okay, guys, really."  
  
Buffy looked around at the others—Kennedy, who was still inexplicably with Willow, would probably support her girlfriend. Andrew was useless, besides which he had liked Willow better than her ever since Willow had souped up his top-of-the-line laptop with magically-enhanced viral protection and the latest version of EQ. Dawn was still in school in Italy. Which left . . . "Xander? Come help me look for him?"  
  
Xander looked at her sadly. "No can do, Buff. Willow's right. Giles needs some space to deal right now. We should just wrap up the meeting without him."  
  
"Fine, fine," Buffy said, throwing her hands up in the air. "But if he's not back by nightfall, or if he's found bleeding in a field somewhere with his horse nowhere in sight, or someone ax murders him, there will be big heaping platters of 'I told you so' served around here." She sat down, hard, and the ancient oak chair squealed beneath her. "Where were we? Xander . . . what's going on in—where were you last?"  
  
"Algiers."  
  
"Right." She grabbed Giles's papers, and shuffled them until she found the Africa memo. "What's the sitch there? Were you able to get in touch with that mullah Giles told you about?"  
  
*****  
  
Willow did know exactly where to find Giles, it was true, but even so she took a circuitous route, to give him whatever extra time alone she could. The post-meeting lunch had been a nervous, hasty affair, with Buffy threatening every few minutes to go out there alone and hunt him down so she could talk sense into him, until Willow had finally had to promise to go herself as soon as the meal was over.  
  
The others had managed to talk Buffy out of going with her, Xander pointing out that Giles wouldn't be thrilled if they ganged up on him, even if by "gang" he meant "two". At Willow's urging, Kennedy had asked Buffy to give her a refresher on longbow technique so she could train the new Slayers in her care when she returned to Brazil. With a few mutterings of "You people suck. He was my Watcher, you know," Buffy had relented. Willow had set out shortly after that, before Buffy could have time to change her mind.  
  
She walked through the fields until she came to a clump of trees, and as she rounded them, he was there, sitting with his eyes closed on the January- cold and damp earth beneath a tree that she had come to think of as theirs during that long, dreadful summer of grief and remorse. She approached him from one side, as quietly as she could manage, hoping not to disturb him for a few moments more.  
  
His eyes opened. "Willow," he said roughly, then cleared his throat. He turned his head in her direction.  
  
"Sorry." Her nose crinkled. "I know you wanted some alone time, but Buffy was about to call out the cavalry. Well, actually more like be the cavalry, and the only way we could hold her off was if I came out here myself. I figured it'd be, you know, better, if it was only one of us, and I knew where to look, so I can just go back and tell them that you're okay, and you can stay out here as long as you—"  
  
"It's okay, Willow."  
  
"Oh?"  
  
"Yes. I appreciate your thoughtfulness in calling off the hounds. You can tell Buffy that I'm fine, and I'll be in again before nightfall. I do just need some, as you said, 'alone time'."  
  
"Oh." She nodded, more vigorously than was necessary.  
  
He gazed off into the distance, where the fields of his property ended and blended into neighboring fields, outlined by hedgerows and dotted with stands of trees. His reverie ended with the thump of Willow hitting the ground beside him.  
  
"Ow. Ground's harder than it was last time I was here. And cold. And—euch. Wet. Isn't your ass freezing, Giles?"  
  
"I'm not the one who came out here in a short jacket," he said tightly, indicating the heavy black trench he had on, which protected him from the chill and damp. "And I'm actually accustomed to the idea of seasons. I'm quite alright. Only I'm wondering what it is you're still doing here. Aren't you going to report back to Buffy?"  
  
"I might do that in a little while. I thought I'd sit here first and take a look around . . . . Hey! That's the Turner-Barclays' property over there." She swept her hand to the right, pointing toward one of the distant clusters of buildings. "They finally finished that addition to their stables. Huh. Looks nice."  
  
He glanced in the direction she was pointing. "Yes, they completed it last spring. What happened," he asked, glaring at her, "to my time alone?"  
  
Willow shrugged. "Oh, that. Changed my mind when I saw you." Giles growled, but before he could frame a more articulate reproach, Willow continued, "Now I'm not going to beat it out of you, Mister. I'm not Buffy. I won't even force you to talk. But I'm gonna sit here with you for a while. Quietly. And if you decide you feel the need to say something, feel free."  
  
He frowned. "I quail with fear at your mighty resolve face."  
  
"You should," she replied calmly.  
  
They sat like this, silently, for several minutes, each looking in opposite directions.  
  
"I know I said I wasn't gonna make you talk, but my ass is freezing, and I think I'm coming down with arthritis or something, so I'm gonna say what I have to say. And then we don't have to do this anymore if you don't want. Okay?"  
  
His hazel eyes turned a stormy green. "What choice have I?" he asked bitterly.  
  
"I suppose you could always yell and then stomp off in a huff."  
  
"You'd only run me to ground again." He sighed. "Just tell me—whatever it is you have to say—and be done with it."  
  
She looked up at him defiantly—she hadn't expected him to fold this easily. "I will." Her mouth opened. Closed again.  
  
"You've quite finished, then?" Willow didn't answer. "I thank you for your concern, but you may leave me now."  
  
"Hey! Buffy's not the only one who's worried about you, you know," she shouted.  
  
Giles snorted. "I think you'll find she's not so much worried as pissed off at me. Again."  
  
"I know that things have been tense between you two this week, what with having to decide what to do with Dana, and the whole finding out that Spike's back. But Buffy's—"  
  
"Buffy is doing what she always does, which is to conflate me with Quentin Travers, or with her asshole of a father, or with whomever else she finds responsible for how shitty her life has been thus far, and is laying all the blame at my feet." His face was ashen, and he continued dully. "I can't talk to her anymore, Willow. She doesn't hear me anymore."  
  
Willow could almost feel the veins coming out on her forehead as she exploded. "Oh for fuck's sake, Rupert! I would have believed that last year, when you were both being so stupid and hardheaded about Spike, but Buffy's actually been working at it since she settled in Italy. She's growing up, and I think you resent the hell out of it, because she doesn't worry about what you'll think if she does what she wants."  
  
Before, Giles had been bitter, but resigned. This managed to awaken his fury. "You're telling me that I was supposed to just stand by and let her protect a rapist vampire who had recently killed again, while she just ran right over the rest of us—"  
  
"I'm saying that it's time to get past that. Buffy said you'd hashed that out already."  
  
"I—" He was standing now, glaring down at her where she was sitting against the massive roots of their tree. Keep your head, Willow, she thought. Give him a fight, if it's what he wants, but don't let him rattle you.  
  
She stayed planted where she was, and asked him, her voice steady and firm, "Was she lying to me?"  
  
"No."  
  
Still steady. Still firm. "Then what's the deal, Giles? What aren't you saying here while you're blowing smoke up my ass with this Buffy thing that's supposed to be over?"  
  
Giles blinked. "I don't know what you mean."  
  
"You really think playing dumb is going to work with me?"  
  
"I don't know what—Fuck!" Giles wheeled around so he was no longer facing her and crossed his arms at his chest, his shoulders raised up around his ears defensively. "Enough! Just go back to the house and leave me the hell alone, if you don't want to hear anymore about your precious Buffy. No one invited you out here to interrogate me."  
  
Turned away as he was, he couldn't see Willow flinch. She took a deep, calming breath, and said airily, "What are you gonna do if I don't, Rupert? Run off again? How's that been workin' for ya?"  
  
"Sod off, Willow," he said, so low she could barely hear him.  
  
"Oooh. I was right. Buffy's not the only one you're mad at. You want a piece of me, too? You think you can take me?" It occurred to her, briefly, that she should be alarmed at how easily she still accessed this dark, taunting part of herself, the part that in her less-than-honest moments she had blamed on the dark majicks. Nearly two years on, and the old resentments were still there, just waiting for her to set them free.  
  
No. She was saying these things to help him. Sometimes, you have to hurt people in order to help them.  
  
"Don't push me, girl," he snarled.  
  
She tasted harsh majicks on her tongue. Like copper. Like blood. She swallowed them down, let them dissipate into the Earth, then rose shakily to her feet.  
  
"Oh, I think I push," she said as she advanced on him. He still refused to look her way, so she went around him, got up in his face. "I'm sick of this! We've been through hell together—how many years now? And you still won't let us in because why? We won't get it? We're too young to take it? Guess what—we're not kids anymore." She was shouting and jabbing her index finger at him, and it felt good, she thought. It felt good to finally confront him with all of this when she was being reasonable about it instead of being evil Willow.  
  
"We've all been through the same things you've been through, by now," she continued. As she pushed toward him, he backed away, until finally she had him up against the tree. "We've all lost lovers and family and—and everything to the Hellmouth, and we might be able to help you if you'd let us. So stop being the old geezer and just talk to me, okay? God! How can you be so stupid about this?"  
  
Her last word rang out, and all that was left was the harsh wheeze of their breathing as they fogged up the chilly air around them. Willow placed her hand on the tree behind Giles to hold herself upright as she took long, shuddering gulps of air into her lungs and coughed them out.  
  
When she was recovered, she noticed that Giles was grasping her by the shoulder. His mouth twitched up at the corners as he said, gravely, "A geyser is a water heater in this country."  
  
She frowned. "Oh. Well that doesn't change the fact that you're wrong about, like, everything else I just said."  
  
He nodded. Squeezed her shoulder gently. "I'm sorry I called you a girl. Of course you're grown now—all of you—but—"  
  
"Not the point here."  
  
"I know. I just . . . some things are private, and I find it difficult to talk about them with anyone. Truly, it's nothing to do with any of you."  
  
"I get that, and that would be fine, except that instead of talking with us, you bluster around and snap at us over things that shouldn't even be issues now. And I think it's time the emotional marathon man crossed the damn finish line, don't you?"  
  
He let go of her then and, leaning back against the old tree, looked down at her through hooded eyes. "This sounds an awful lot like trying to force me to talk, Willow."  
  
"Yeah. I lied." She stuck her tongue out at him. "Took you long enough to catch on, old man."  
  
To Willow's surprise, Giles laughed and said, "You . . . evil witch."  
  
"Demon raiser."  
  
He grinned dangerously. "Bean flicker."  
  
Willow's mouth dropped open. "Giles! I can't believe you just . . . . Fag's a cigarette here, isn't it?" He nodded. "Damn."  
  
He laughed again. "Also, I'm not actually gay."  
  
"What was Ethan Rayne, then?"  
  
"How did you—no." He shook his head as if to clear it. "I give up. What can I say?" He spread his hands. "It was the Seventies. I blame the drugs."  
  
"That excuse'll only get you so far."  
  
"How odd. You sounded remarkably like my father just then."  
  
And just as suddenly as this strange, humorous mood had taken him, it vanished at the mention of his father. Giles bumped the back of his head against the tree and squeezed his eyes shut.  
  
Willow studied him for a moment, then cautiously took him by the hand. "Seriously, Giles, what's wrong?" she asked softly. "Can I . . . I'd like to help, if I can. Or, you know, if you wanted to talk to one of the others instead, I'd understand. You've helped all of us so much, and we want a turn."  
  
He swallowed, hard, before he opened his eyes and said, "You win. I'll talk."  
  
She smiled. "Yay me! But can we, um, walk around or something while you do?" She pulled her hand away, rubbed absently at the seat of her jeans. "I think I'm getting carpal tunnel of the butt or something." She pouted.  
  
"Butts don't have carpal tunnels," Giles said repressively, and Willow smiled at the small cluck that followed. "And, yes, certainly we could walk. We'll head toward the Turner-Barclays', shall we?"  
  
"Cool."  
  
They started out across the meadow slowly, working out the kinks in their joints. Giles was silent for several yards, and Willow bit her lip to keep from speaking first. Finally, Giles said, "There's not much to help, really. This situation with Dana's really thrown me. I-I don't know what we can do for her, or what we'll have to do to her if we can't control her violent tendencies."  
  
"She's never going to be a Slayer, is she?"  
  
He threw a pained look her way—the one Willow had come to call his "you daft girl" look. "More importantly," he said, "she's never going to be fully human, after what's happened to her. I'm afraid that her Slayer powers—and the attendant visions—have made it impossible for her to ever recover her sanity, if there was any hope before. And a mental hospital would never be able to help her. We'll have to take responsibility for her for the rest of her life."  
  
Don't get defensive, Willow thought. This is just business. "And we have enough people to do that, Giles. We've already worked that out, with contengency plans out the wazoo."  
  
"Yes, we have enough people. For one Slayer like this. Or perhaps a dozen. But there will be others." He put a hand out in front of her, and they stopped walking. Giles continued, "Girls we don't find in time. Girls so frightened of the dreams that they kill themselves. Girls who have spent their entire lives as victims, and use their newfound power to murder those who have harmed them. Girls who simply take too much pleasure in killing. It's already begun."  
  
Giles spoke with an intensity that alarmed her. "We're doing the best—"  
  
"Not to mention that we still haven't the first idea if the spell is permanent in its effect, or if this is the only generation to be collectively called. At any rate, there are so many of them now that there's at least a decade's worth of too much work, and only a handful of us to do it."  
  
"We know all about this, too. Are you saying we shouldn't have done the spell? Because there's no way we could have known that the amulet was what would defeat the First, and at the time I recall you thought it was a 'bloody brilliant' idea." Way to go with the not defensive, Will. Just because you know he's right . . . .  
  
She watched him as he seemed to struggle with something within himself, before his focus turned outward again and he said, with a sigh, "No, I agree. There was no time to sort out the consequences. It doesn't make facing them now any easier, does it?"  
  
Willow relaxed a little. "I guess not." They started to walk again, less awkwardly than before. Willow sensed that it was time. "Giles, I have something I need to discuss with you, and I need you not to make a big fuss about it until you hear the whole thing."  
  
He glared at her, then quickly shifted his eyes away. "I always hear you out before making 'a big fuss'," he replied sulkily.  
  
"Uh-huh . . . . We've been talking—me and Buffy and Xander, and Dawn, too, but not Kennedy or Andrew or the others," she picked up speed as she spoke, and she knew she was babbling but couldn't seem to find the off button. "Because they don't know you as well, and it wouldn't be right for them to—"  
  
"Willow!"  
  
She exhaled. "Right. Get to the point. We're concerned, Giles. About how you're doing."  
  
He stuffed his hands down into his pockets and rummaged around in them a bit before producing an apple. "So you've said." He pulled out a second apple, and silently offered it to her.  
  
"No thanks."  
  
"I'm sorry, I'm feeling a bit peckish. I, um, I might have a few sugar cubes in here as well. They were for the horses, but . . . ."  
  
"That's okay. I'm full from lunch. You eat."  
  
"Thanks." He put one of the apples away, and bit into the other one. He looked thoughtful as he chewed. "So, this concern you all share. Is it general, or have I done something specific to merit it?"  
  
"A little of both, I guess. You know us . . . don't see what's going on right in front of us till something ugly beats us over the head with it."  
  
Giles said nothing, very pointedly chewing his apple.  
  
"Yeah. And, well, like I was saying, you were always the grownup before. So, you know, you helped us when things were hard, or when we were hurt, or when—when we lost someone. And we never did much to help you with the same stuff. Okay—partly because you never gave us a chance, and partly because a lot of stuff happened before we really understood what we could help with, but some of it was just because we were too dumb to notice that things weren't okay with you."  
  
They continued walking toward the property line as Willow spoke. Giles finished his apple and flung the core as far to his left as he could throw it. Willow watched as it bounced off the brown turf and rolled away, until she could no longer see it. When she looked at Giles again, he had started on the second apple, and was observing her quietly as he ate. She waited, gawky and helpless under his gaze.  
  
He finished eating, and said, with awkward care, "In times when I have needed support you have all been of great comfort to me. I apologise for not making that clear to you before now."  
  
"But how? We never talked about anything, Giles. Not like you'd get us to talk to you."  
  
He smiled sadly at her. "When Jenny died, and then . . . after . . . having you lot to care for, to concern myself about, kept me from indulging my self-destructive impulses too much. 'Talking things out', as you Americans put it, is not something I find as helpful as having something outside myself—as a purpose, as a distraction, as something to ground me in the world. Do you follow?"  
  
Willow frowned at him stubbornly. "I guess so."  
  
"Then tell me, what is it that has you all so worried about me?"  
  
"Well, it's like I said. We're stupid about some things. And we have had a lot on our own plates. But it's like we suddenly realized that you've been dealing with a lot of deaths in the past year."  
  
"So have you. So have the others."  
  
She would not cry. She was not going to cry. "Yeah . . . Spike—even though he's, well, undead again. And Anya and the Potentials and Slayers who died at the Hellmouth. A-and Tara—" She felt his hand find hers, and squeezed it. "And they're all important, and we're all grieving. And you're right, having this work to do helps to make that time a little easier, I suppose." She squeezed his hand more tightly. "But that's not what I'm talking about, Giles."  
  
"I'm not sad to see the old Council go, if that's what you're getting at."  
  
"See, that's just it. We all hated the Council so much—the institution, and the ones we'd met, except for you, that we never stopped and thought about all the people that died when it was destroyed. Did you know a lot of them?"  
  
"Yes," he answered, tersely. They had reached the property line. "Let me give you a leg up over that fence." He stooped down and laced his hands together.  
  
She waited until they were both over before she continued. "There had to be at least some of them you considered friends, right? And probably some of your family? I mean, I know your dad died before you came out to Sunnydale, but . . . ."  
  
They were walking a few feet apart from each other now, and Giles gazed off toward the new stables, still a good half-mile off. "I had an uncle in mystical acquisitions, and a handful of cousins who were researchers. And, yes, most of them didn't make it."  
  
Willow wept now, though she tried to do it silently, and she was grateful that Giles still was not looking her way. She thought that, somehow, it was an intrusion for her to cry on his behalf, and one he would not welcome. Through her tears, fighting to keep her voice steady, she said, "Oh, Giles. You should have told us."  
  
"It wasn't . . . Look, I wasn't exactly close to any of the Council—not even my family. And at the time, it seemed more important to do what I could to save the living. There simply wasn't time. Here, Willow. Take it, please." He pulled out a clean handkerchief and thrust it at her.  
  
"Thanks. I'm so sorry. I know I shouldn't—All those people Giles. The Council, and the Potentials you never found . . . the ones who died at the Hellmouth. It's all just too much."  
  
She wiped her eyes, then blew her nose with great force. They were standing in the middle of what had been, the last time she had been here, the neighbors' corn field (Not wheat, she thought. They call it corn here. And corn is called maize. But it doesn't matter, since it's all barren now.), staring at each other. She twisted the handkerchief around and around her thumb, until her thumb turned red, and Giles stilled her hand.  
  
"That's enough, Willow," he said, his voice shaken. He pried the cloth from her hand and returned it to his pocket.  
  
"No, it isn't. It's never enough."  
  
This time, he didn't even pretend ignorance. "Of course not. But not to do anything . . . that's its own kind of death."  
  
"Can you say you've really lived, Giles? You've been fighting evil for so long now—it's all you do. There's so much you're missing out on . . . and it's wrong! It's wrong that you think you have to save the world, when it should have been someone else's turn a long time ago!"  
  
Willow knew she wasn't being terribly adult about this, standing as she was in the middle of a field, crying to Giles about how life just wasn't fair. Willow knew this, and she didn't care. She wasn't going to be a grownup about this, and she was tired of Giles being such a grownup about it. Maybe if she could get him to kick and scream with her, he'd eventually kick and scream against his fate as well, and finally allow himself to rest, and to grieve. And maybe then he'd get to have his own life—one with someone to snuggle with at night, and maybe some kids of his own, and a job that he really liked that he could leave each afternoon and not worry about all the time. And maybe then . . . maybe then there would be hope that the rest of them could have all of this, too . . . someday, when their turn to fight was finally over.  
  
But Giles saw none of this. He just saw her: the child. And he, ever the adult, could only say, tiredly, "Of course it's wrong. It's terribly unfair. This whole fight is. But those of us called upon—"  
  
"That's crap, Giles. You're not the only one called to do it! So why don't you just stop? Let yourself rest now? Why can't you do that?"  
  
He stared down at the dormant earth, then slowly lifted his eyes to hers. "I don't know. I don't know." 


End file.
